Friday, February 13, 2015

NO MORE PIGEON CHESS IN LENR's FUTURE (ALAIN COETMEUR)

MOTTO

Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.(Gilbert K. Chesterton)For me, this solid is - here- LENR+. And I am perhaps not more so solitary thinking this is a step forward from LENR- that is, an interesting certainty must change its nature to become good for applications.Yesterday, during my Web explorations I came upon a French site of renewable energies and immediately I could read there that "cold fusion is a myth" Some people are not willing to accept a new- and as it happens a better reality and remain unchanged at the same old prejudices. Then I renumbered that our friend Alain has written about a good metaphor.I am constantly learning new words and expressions- it happened that despite my recurrent passion for chess see-http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2012/04/memories-from-chess-club.htmlI had no idea about Pigeon Chess, well present in the American jargon.Nobody is perfect is good when applied to other people.Here is Alain's polemic writing, thanks you much, dear Alain! Let's écrasez l'infâme! How can we fight with people having immutable prejudices- we meet them on a very broad, meandering frontline

ALAIN COETMEUR'S CONTRIBUTION

Pigeon Chess

Since few days I had a strange experience, I discovered chess with very good players, a community of very successful pigeon players. Pigeon are known across the planet as the best chess players. It is the consensus among pigeons, and they all agree that humans are bad players. Pigeon newspapers in Italy, in USA, in France, all agree that pigeons have the good strategy.

Most cited (among pigeons) peer-reviewed refereed journals of chess strategy agree that humans have terrible problem to respect the rules of chess, use overly complicated strategy whose success is not guaranteed, and there is definitive evidence that human brain does not allow to play chess correctly. Humans are all deluded in believing they can win at chess.

Yesterday I have seen desperate human chess players who questioned their underground community, about why humans never succeeded to win any party against pigeons. I know them as very respectful players, knowing not only the rules of chess, but also the strategies, the known pitfalls, and aware of the literature.

They questioned their competence and their historical results, the quality of their respective parties. It is clear that some of their parties were not optimal, and that some player have made mistakes. They were very critical on their own work, questioning their strategies.

This make me interested in looking at their human chess journals, and watch some of their parties. There was some dubious strategies, but some players, and some parties were really looking fantastic.

I analyzed some parties against pigeons, and from the scenario it was clear that the human players before declared losers, were winning. The pigeon before winning was in desperate position, having lost nearly all pieces. I am not expert in chess so I instantly imagined that pigeons had a terribly efficient method to fight back, giving them a huge advantage. After all when something that seems false is claimed true, it is that you missed a point.

Did the chess played missed a point in chess rules ? Some players did, but most did not.

Some proposed that they organize a great training to play the best parties, to give evidence of their great talent in chess.

Some were sad, that in 25 years no human succeed in showing a successful party, and desperate that they never see a winning human.

I finally looked at the secret of the superiority of pigeons, seen in 4 articles published in the 90s :

"they knock the pieces over, crap on the board, and fly back to the flock to claim victory."

The situation is clearly the same in cold fusion.

As describes recent Michael McKubre's article to be published in Current Science (India), Cold Fusion consensus is based on few pigeon parties :

"Occasionally, with decreasing regularity, one hears statements to the effect that ‘Cold fusion has been proven to not exist or to have been based on errors’. Almost always the words ‘long ago’ are appended. Never are examples of error given at any level of scientific sophistication. If pressed the authority of experts in the fields of nuclear or particle physics are invoked, or early publications of null results by ‘influential laboratories’ – Caltech, MIT, Bell Labs, Harwell. Almost to a man these experts have long ago retired or deceased, and the authors of these early publications of ‘influential laboratories’ have long since left the field and not returned. The issue of ‘long ago’ is important as it establishes a time window in which information was gathered sufficient for some to draw a permanent conclusion – some time between 23 March 1989 and ‘long ago’. Absurdly for a matter of this seeming importance, ‘long ago’ usually dates to the Spring Meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) on 1 May 1989. So the whole matter was reported and then comprehensively dismissed within 40 days (and, presumably, 40 nights). From what we now know is this sensible? Has pertinent new information and understanding developed over 25 years of further study been examined with the wisdom of hindsight? What is the status of these early null results?"

and when you connect to the desperate tentative to teach the pigeon magazine , as reported by Jed Rothwell, you see well the pigeon strategy :

"Lewis may have observed the same level of excess heat that Fleischmann and others did with similar materials and electrochemical conditions. But instead of concluding that he was seeing 14% excess heat, Lewis concluded that the instrument had changed 14%. He did not specify a reason why it might have changed, and he did not perform recalibration tests that would confirm the change and pinpoint the source of the error in the instruments."

The most pathetic is that this "tweaking" was only correcting a marginal result, probably an error, because his calorimetry was not precise enough.

MIT replication team used a similar pigeon tactic, in a less subtle way :

when a curves goes where it should not, bend it!

"A copy of the raw data trace from a pen recorder showed some signs of unexpected heat. The pen recorder data was converted to one-hour round points in the published version. These points were moved down to the zero line, and some were moved to the left and right, suggesting that the change was made manually by a person rather than a computer. This led some people to suspect the data was tampered with. [5, 6] See Ref. 5, pp. 21 - 24. Storms thinks the apparent heat in the original data is not significant. It is only instrument noise. [7] However, it should not have been erased in the published version."

You can find more details on calorimetry comparison in Melvin Miles' presentation done for ICCF17

claim anything , and if people disagree, repeat until they abandon or goes away!

"In rare cases, a few scientists have been guilty of even more unethical behavior. McKubre and other prominent cold fusion scientists have given copies of journal papers to prominent critics, including Douglas Morrison, Robert Park, and John Huizenga. The papers directly contradict assertions made by the critics regarding matters of fact, not opinion, such as the amount of energy produced by cells in continuous bursts, the percent of input versus output, or the amount of chemical energy that a mass 0.5 grams of palladium deuteride will release as it degasses. Morrison often claims the degassing can account for the heat produced during an experiment performed by Fleischmann and Pons. Fleischmann gave him a paper showing conclusively that he is mistaken by a factor of 1,700. Morrison has been told about this mistake countless times, at conferences, in writing, and in a formal reply published in Physics Letters A. Yet he recently contacted a Nobel laureate and repeated the same misinformation. Fortunately, the Nobel scientist contacted me, and I was able to give him the correct numbers. "

For those interested in verifying the claims, you can read the debate with Morrison and F&P.

I prefer not to talk of Gary Taubes who is more a cuckoo, hijacking a pigeon strategy to sell books... All is said in Jed's Titanic article and in "Fire From Ice" from Mallove. He used s statisticians tactic : pick the good point if statistic disagree.

Finally the boss of the pigeons himself, Huizenga , cited in that deleted Wikipedia page

"Furthermore, if the claimed excess heat exceeds that possible by other conventional processes (chemical, mechanical, etc.), one must conclude that an error has been made in measuring the excess heat."

I have heard this pigeon motto on most forum, blogs, with any level of education, up to physicist. There is no way to teach the rules of chess to pigeon, they have their own rules.

This impossibility is described by Thomas Kuhn as the "Incommensurability" of paradigms. Pigeon play in a pigeon paradigm, not chess.

First there is no question of evidence with pigeons. Playing chess with a pigeon is foolish game.

The only good reason to play with pigeon is to find humans that are desperate to find good players, or to learn chess, or to watch good chess. Never try to convince the pigeons, nor worry of losing parties against them. Spread the facts, and the facts will talk for you to everybody, else the pigeons.

Play chess, with rigor, with patience, with modesty, but with players who respect the rules of the game, the epistemology of science.

This is not easy as to improve your game you need partners, you need budgets, you need journals and pigeon have money and journals.

Edmund Storms was right in his books and article in explaining his concern that there was not enough peer review, nor much awareness of each-others works.

The tragic evil of pigeons is that they prevent players to improve, to share competences, to go further in the game. Currently, beside some industrial efforts, cold fusion is at the state of a player who could not play more than 25 move before being stopped by the pigeon clowneries.

One tactic to be funded and find journals is to find animals who play other games, based on reality and not consensus, like businessmen, industrialists, dreamers. Greed is often claimed to be a problems, but it is much less than pigeon's pride. The best energy I know is the intimate dream of entrepreneurs and the positive ambition of wounded nations, beyond money and hate.

Finally from all that competence, design an oven, cook few pigeons, make millions with a pigeon restaurant, and the survivors will know that you are superior, when they will see their name on the menu.

18 comments:

Nice. Now, about the Cal Tech and MIT replication failures. From what we now know, as you can see in the McKubre article, for Lewis to have seen 14% XP would be astonishing. They didn't have the loading. So Lewis was probably correct! That is, he didn't see XP, and probably neither did MIT. So what is going on? Well, just as pseudoskeptics can make up objections whenever they want, so too can "believers." The answer, within science, is to return to science and the scientific method. The answer, within politics, is to play pigeon chess, better than the *other* pigeons.

Each game has its rules. We can also crap on the board, and we will, from time to time, to win. Science isn't about winning, as a personal matter, but politics is.

Maybe we need more science in politics, but that's another issue. I will completely agree that we need less politics in science, but, then again, so will almost every sane person. Now, Captain, Make It So.

The problem with MIt and caltech is not the null result.but1- trying to hide an uncertain result, by fear that the populace may interpret it wrongly, hiding their own uncertainty2- trying to give an explanation without being modest, and without even verifying it was applying.

note that 80% loading is just an estimate... may be more if lucky, if badly reported...

Bending the curve is of the same kind, of trying to remove dubious result that cannot be interpreted because of bad calorimetry.

none of the adjustement can be justified.The only alternative would be to say : my instrument is drifting or not, I cannot say anything... For artifact they could modestly ask "did you account for recombination sir?" "did you stirr sir"?

the method itself remove any chance of good science.

I cannot trust the result of people who bend curves, bend instruments, accuse without evidence nor even questions, ...same for those who support those behavior as justified (by what ? by risk of making an error? it is an error)

That is a problem as now, I don't trust those groups, and some are competent, but their bias remove them any right to be believed.

when someone crap on the board, you don't expect him to play good chess.

In the realm of animals, everyone knows that cats can play chess, just not very well. However, in any contest between a pigeon and a cat I would have to give the nod to the feline, either by immediate victory or (if not adequately surprised) the bird abandoning the game.

Regarding human chess, in slang borrowed from gambling, "pigeon" means "sucker". In this case it describes the weak players who practically line up to lose money at speed chess, e.g., to the regular "masters" at outdoor venues such as Washington Square Park in NYC. If it actually turns out you're any good, a "master" will gladly distract you with chatter and singing and blown cigarette smoke and a spilled drink.

'Pigeon Chess' had flown well under my radar so not only was this something to learn but a deja-vu in regard to several past episodes in learning about LENR (- & +). In fact it brought back the image of past pain from pigeon pecks, pigeon crap in the face, feathers up the nose etc: and that familiar scenario of the lead pigeon along with his flock of nfollowers doing the victory strut then all noisily fluttering away in their glory.

In blogspace it seems the pigeons like to adopt funny avatars such as 'General Zaroff' but as long as they have their sycophant flock mates to cackle along behind they never lose (even if they did).

The phenomenon is not new (as I am sure we all know). And, it isn't just modern science. This story is reminiscent of the split in the early psychoanalytic movements between Freud and Jung which became quite poisonous. In reflecting on 'Pigeon Chess' between the factions it did get a bit hard to distinguish which side were the pigeons, but the clue is this ...

Which side ends up strutting arrogantly around knocking over the pieces, crapping on the board and doing a victory dance vs the other side perched at the edge, often dumfounded, with little else to do but try to unruffle their feathers.

about battle between psychoanalysis, it is consensus in france, and taught to each highschool student.

after some article from Cognitive behavioral therapy about psychoanaysis practices and theories, I thing they will consider all as Pigeon...what is sure is that they are better at lobbying the French government to avoid being declared pseudo-science than curing autistic syndromes.

It seems that teaching pseudo-science in school and enforcing experimentally refuted consensus to students is a general practice . With good Pigeon chess, you can ruin the career of any opponents (see Semmelweiss), even if he have perfect evidences.

I supporte the desperate vision of Feyerabend that separating reality from myth is impossible with a formal method... too sensible to pigeon effect that make people cnsider some myth as evidences.

Practical interest of selfish players is for me the only solution to separate real from pseudo...anything real that have no practical application cannot thus be distinguished from pseudoscience, and any pseudoscience with no usability at shorterm (else it's own consensu) can be supported forever.

it is quite complicated to apply that rule, as some total fake science can cause financial success, not because of it's reality, but because of the consensus itself which can give value to the belief.

Ahh yes, Semmelweiss. Who proved his point then got removed because a generation of Doctors were irritated by his demand for obstetric cleanliness. They preferred the returning high mortality rate to his near 100% success. The world doesn't really change, it just turns lol.

Ahh yes, Semmelweiss. Who proved his point then got removed because a generation of Doctors were irritated by his demand for obstetric cleanliness. They preferred the returning high mortality rate to his near 100% success. The world doesn't really change, it just turns lol.

I disagree with the modern vision of semmelweiss as a an heroic bolchevik who asked rich doctors to clean their hands, like poor nuns and who was bashed for that crime.

If you re read the story of people like Alexander, Gordon Oliver de Aberdeen, Semmelweiss, Pasteur, you will see that the real problem was THEORY

once the germs theory was accepted, the doctors quickly behave like professional and cleaned their hands like the nuns.

the difference between nuns and doctors is EDUCATION.nuns were professional, and doctors were scientists.

as Thomas Kuhn explain, and Taleb says in Antifragile (History being written by the losers), history is rewritten to hide the real tragedy of science.

the tragedy of X-ray, quasicristals, HTSC is simply hidden.for semmelweiss it is harder to hide, so they invent a myth based on social class battle, to hide the usual paradigm change tragedy.same for wright planes, where pretended errors of Wright are blamed, while in fact like for cold fusion, Wegener, all was public and verified.http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/inventors/i/Wrights/library/WrightSiAm1.htmlhttp://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJthewrightb.pdf

"I agree with Tom Vaughn about the bait and switch and I also disagree about the consensus in any scientific endeavor. Consensus is nice to have but my no means a must have in the scientific method. EVIDENCE is the cornerstone of science [...]. I was a geology major in college, I had a professor that recalled being told when he was in college that any reference to "continental drift" (AKA plate tectonics) would result in an immediate "F" for the semester. I'm 57 years old and I missed by one generation the time when there was still active, if diminishing, debate over sea floor spreading. The debate is a good thing, the debate is healthy, the debate is necessary. "

http://astronauticsnow.com/history/goddard/index.html

there is no excuse, there is no hope.

On oven of history rules. Let us cool the pigeons. there is no alternative.

and never remember that according to pigeon history, no pigeon have ever been cooked by human. they just moved without return to another continent.No pigeon can admit he have been cooked, but they taste good.

How is the Winter in Finland?What you say is true, but please be a bit more precise.Do not confound pseudoscience with pre-science that has a great dose of "we still don't know" in it.Can you tell us some direct info about ETIAM?Peter

How is the Winter in Finland?What you say is true, but please be a bit more precise.Do not confound pseudoscience with pre-science that has a great dose of "we still don't know" in it.Can you tell us some direct info about ETIAM?Peter